Honey talks

By Carrie Cox

Multidisciplinary research into every aspect of honey production has uncovered rich potential for the nation’s beekeeping industry.

A five-year research program drawing on expertise from every corner of UWA is helping to harness the potential of Australian honey, historically one of the world’s most undervalued sources.

The Cooperative Research Centre for Honey Bee Products grew out of a successful CRC grant application in 2017 by UWA research development advisor Liz Barbour. It soon expanded into a multidisciplinary team comprising researchers from areas as diverse as engineering, chemistry, geography, biology and business — a veritable hive of research activity.

According to Dr Barbour, who served as CEO of the centre until the CRC’s official expiration in late 2022, the program soon tapped into a belief in the uniqueness of Australian honey and its untapped commercial and medicinal potential.

“Most of these researchers had never worked together before, but things came together very swiftly because everyone could see the value that could be added to this industry in so many ways,” Dr Barbour says.

“Particularly here in WA, you’re talking about some of the purest honey in the world, most of it from flowering forests and all of it free from agriculture chemicals – it’s extremely rare.

But Australian honey across the board has been undervalued compared to honey from other countries and so one of the most important goals of the CRC was to produce outcomes for the industry that would help drive up the price of honey.”

Developing honey ‘fingerprints’

One of the many tangible outcomes of the CRC was the development of a ‘fingerprinting’ system to identify honey varieties, which is critical to enabling robust authentication of honeys, supporting quality control efforts and providing a baseline dataset for other research.

Associate Professor Cornelia Locher headed up this area of research, which ultimately resulted in the fingerprinting of 450 Australian honey samples, many now being registered internationally.

“We looked at the non-sugar components of honey and we zoomed right into them because they are chemically often related to the nectar source, which has a specific signature,” she says.

“We used a technique known as High Performance Thin Layer Chromatography to separate the non-sugar constituents of honey. “The beauty of this technique is that it’s quite visual and we produced fingerprints that present as bands of colour, which is not only helpful from an authentication point of view but also a marketing tool.”

"Particularly here in WA, you’re talking about some of the purest honey in the world, most of it from flowering forests and all of it free from agriculture chemicals – it’s extremely rare."

Dr Liz Barbour CEO of the Cooperative Research Centre for Honey Bee Products

 

Indeed, the marketing arm of the CRC – led by UWA Business School researcher Professor Sharon Purchase – used these coloured fingerprints as key components of the branding strategy they devised for WA honey varieties. Honey jar labels were produced with batch numbers and a QR code that takes consumers to a website with all the key information about the honey’s origins, including its specific fingerprint.

Associate Professor Locher says besides capturing the diversity of honey varieties on offer within WA, producing chemical and antioxidant baselines highlighted those that are currently “flying under the radar” and could be better promoted or utilised. For example, a WA-produced variety called Red Bell honey exhibits extremely high antioxidant activity on a par with, or possibly even higher than, the famed Manuka honey. “Now, with this baseline data and evidence of antioxidant activity, we can give information back to industry that is helpful for their marketing,” Associate Professor Locher says. “It’s a great outcome and the industry is excited about it.”

Assessing honey’s antibacterial activity

Working closely with the chemistry team was Dr Katherine Hammer, from UWA’s School of Biomedical Sciences. Her team carried out testing of the antibacterial activity of honey varieties, assessing their activity on different bacterial species.

“Traditional methods of testing didn’t suit WA honey varieties, so we came up with our own new method that gives each honey what we call an Antimicrobial Activity Value,” Dr Hammer explains. “In conjunction with the fingerprinting process, this enabled us to give the industry lots more robust data about their honey varieties.”

One of Dr Hammer’s CRC subprojects tested the activity of a small selection of honeys against bacteria that produces ‘school sores’ or impetigo.

“The results were positive and indicated that the pathogenic bacteria are indeed susceptible to honey,” she says. “The next stage of investigation would be to conduct clinical studies with patients to see if honey works in a real-world situation.”

Diagnosing bee health

The CRC not only looked at the health characteristics of honey but necessarily of bees too. Biochemist and geneticist Dr Julia Grassl, from UWA’s School of Molecular Sciences, led this area of research, which looked at disease detection in bees, breeding traits and nutrition. “It’s particularly important given today’s climate conditions where accessible land is increasingly spare due to climate change, bushfires and urbanisation,” Dr Grassl says.

The CRC not only looked at the health characteristics of honey but necessarily of bees too. Biochemist and geneticist Dr Julia Grassl, from UWA’s School of Molecular Sciences, led this area of research, which looked at disease detection in bees, breeding traits and nutrition.

“It’s particularly important given today’s climate conditions where accessible land is increasingly spare due to climate change, bushfires and urbanisation,” Dr Grassl says.

One of her CRC projects targeted the bacterial disease called American foulbrood. “It’s one of the most devastating diseases in the honey bee industry and really hard for beekeepers to detect,” she says. “You’re basically looking for one or two slightly indented cells within a whole hive, so it’s easily overlooked.

“Its name comes from the fact that it smells, like death in fact, and as biochemists we know all smells are molecules; particles in the air. So what we did was capture the smell in an infected hive and then we identified the molecules that are specific to American foulbrood. So we now have a list of biomarkers that we know come from this disease and the next step is trying to make sensors for these molecules that will enable beekeepers to identify American foulbrood much earlier.”

Dr Katherine Hammer and PhD student Kathryn Green carried out testing of the antibacterial activity of honey varieties. Image credit: Ian & Erick

Harnessing honey’s market potential

Working closely with the scientists on the honey bee CRC were marketing experts from UWA’s School of Business led by Professor Sharon Purchase. Driven by the industry’s imperative to increase the price of Australian honey, Professor Purchase’s team quickly established that the greatest sales potential existed in the export market.

“We did market research to look at the buying narratives specific to particular countries and regions, the most common being ‘terroir’, which includes product information about geography, environment, heritage, soil and flowers, and how all of this comes together,” she says. “Terroir is particularly important to honey buyers in the Middle East, whereas the health narrative is important in China and the taste narrative is important in the UK.”

The marketing team was also instrumental in the development of a ‘chain of custody’ for honey bee products, the major component of which was the digitisation of the industry’s existing paper-based quality assurance system known as B-QUAL.

A hive of research activity

Other CRC projects have produced B-AGENT, a spatial modelling framework to help migratory beekeepers understand the effects of pressures like climate change on their beekeeping environments, and B-spatial, a decision support tool to help beekeepers select suitable apiary sites.

Besides the many legacy outcomes of the CRC, a number of research projects have continued beyond the CRC’s 2022 end date, a reflection in no small part of the enthusiasm of the researchers involved.

“Yes, we’ve all got the honey bug now,” says Associate Professor Cornelia Locher. “There’s ongoing research into clover honeys and the use of honey in wound care. We’re also now working with the University of Athens because they want to fingerprint some European honeys.

“There’s also a native bee honey project that’s ongoing. And there’s our spinoff commercial venture, Y-Trace, a honey testing lab in Yanchep that provides our techniques as affordable commercial services for beekeepers. We’re definitely still buzzing.”

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